By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Summer is here … just the time for dance companies to turn their thoughts to “The Nutcracker.”
Two local dance troupes are making a leap of faith in the time of a pandemic and casting their annual productions of the holiday dance classic.
Both Julie’s Dance Studio and the Black Swamp Fine Arts School both have done auditions for their productions as they contemplate resuming face-to-face classes.
Julie Setzer, of Julie’s Dance School, consulted with parents who have involved in “The Nutcracker… All Jazzed Up.”
Their advice, Setzer said, was: “We need to proceed. We need to try to get back to normal as best we can. So that’s what we’re doing.”
Sophia Jarrell, founder of the Black Swamp Fine Arts School, is similarly bullish.
She’s already considering the various options for the school’s traditional ballet production. It could be staged as usual in a theater with audience or the performance could be livestreamed. “We will find a way to have a ‘Nutcracker’ of some sort this December,” she said.
This comes after three months of making do in a variety of ways for the studios.
For The Beat Dance Company, that has meant tap dancing in the parking lot, said owner Colleen Murphy.
As the studio wrapped up its virtual sessions, they moved “pop up sessions in the parking lot,” she said. “We got creative outdoors” with jazz, ballet and hip hop in the mix as well as an obstacle course session.
The classes were offered in the morning and early evening “to stay out of the sun.”
Having the students come together in this unique setting for class was fun for everyone especially after so much time at home, she said.
It’s an advantage of owning her own building, Murphy added. She could close off the lot and determine where cars would be without worrying about other tenants.
The studio had launched lessons over Zoom as soon as the stay at home orders were issued in mid-March.
“Our teachers are incredible. Everyone is so eager and giving,” she said despite the challenges faced this spring. “It’s not the most fun teaching a class on Zoom.”
She also offered classes on choreography and how to film dance. “We had some kids really step up.”
The pandemic meant the cancellation of the competitions the Beat teams were planning to participate in. Four were on the books, and three are canceled. Another one is possible, though Murphy’s not sure how that will work if classes must continue adhering to social distancing.
She’s preparing to move indoors for summer sessions.
The studio’s hip hop teacher from Cleveland is coming to do a session next week. That will initiate the summer session for July.
That doesn’t mean everything will return to normal. Students will get their temperatures taken before class. The lobby will be closed off to everyone. With a strict route to enter the building and get to the studio.
Inside the studio the dancers will be six feet apart.
Students will stay with the same teacher and will not move from studio to studio, Murphy said.
“Quite a few families don’t feel safe coming back to class yet,” she said. “So, we’ll have to use a hybrid.”
Using Zoom, classes from the studio will be live streamed.
One teacher will lead the in-studio session, another will manage the computer, while a third will work with the students tuned in remotely.
Murphy said she doubts she’ll be able to offer classes for the youngest students because that requires parents being on hand.
Jarrell said that the Black Swamp School for the Fine Arts will also only have classes for 5 and up.
She’s had to put a lot of thought as well into how to move students through the building. “We have quite a few mandates that we have to follow which we understand because we want to keep everyone healthy first and foremost.”
They will enter in the back, have their temperatures taken, and sanitize their hands. Blocks will be marked on the floor for each student, and each will have a place to deposit their belongings.
Classes will need to be smaller than usual and more time let in between for the area to be sanitized. Students will leave from the front, and the lobby will be closed.
When socializing whether it’s adults or children, it’s easy to get too close, Jarrell said.
Every class will have camera monitors and be recorded “as an extra level of accountability.”
Students returned to the school this week, though Jarrell, who is seven months pregnant, is staying away herself as an extra precaution. Instead, she’s watching the monitors.
Black Swamp School for the Arts moved all its dance classes as well as music lessons online in March. She said she felt like an IT support person during those days.
Setzer said she opted not to offer online classes.
She felt her students would already be spending hours online for classes, and she didn’t want to add to that.
Besides “industry leaders” including Debbie Allen and ballet dancer Misty Coleman were offering free online instruction and guidance. “I really encouraged my students to take advantage of that,” she said. “This is an amazing opportunity.”
She’s expecting that classes in the studio may start again mid-July with ballet intensive sessions. But she’s “not setting anything into stone.”
Setzer said she continues to monitor the situation, especially the predictions that there may be a second wave of infections.
“We’re venturing into the unknown,” she said. “We hope for the best and will see what happens.”
As with many other small businesses, the stay-at-home order has taken a bite out of their bottom-lines.
Murphy said she keeps tabs on the industry through social media. “A lot of people have closed,” she said. “They haven’t been able to weather this.”
Murphy said if this had happened soon after she opened her own building in 2017, she probably wouldn’t have survived. But in the intervening years, she’s been able to put aside some money.
That’s meant she’s been able to pay her teachers.
Over the spring they did some fundraisers using video from previous years.
Jarrell said she was able get help through the Payroll Protection Act to keep paying staff “which is a blessing.”
And parents who were still working set up a scholarship fund, so other students whose families were more severely affected could continue their classes through spring.
“It’s incredible how they’re supporting each other throughout this,” she said.
Jarrell said she’s also inspired by how other arts organizations are addressing the pandemic and its economic fallout.
“They are working to insure that they don’t die way and kids have the chance to learn,” she said. “The arts are so integral to us as people and as a culture. …. People will work to make it happen despite everything.”
